Bright Singh, I S; Rosamma, Philip; Anas, A(Blackwell Publishing, June 1, 2008)
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Abstract:
Chitosan has beenwidely accepted as awall material
for preparing microcapsules of various purposes in
human medicine. The possibility of using chitosan
as a wall material for microencapsulating nutrients
and drugs for aquaculture purposes, speci¢cally to
Macrobrachium rosenbergii larvae was evaluated in
this study. Two types of chitosan-coated microcapsules
were prepared using either acetone (MEC-A) or
NaOH (MEC-N) as the cross-linking agents. They
were compared with a microbound diet relative to
total leaching of nutrients and free amino acids
(FAA). Among the microcapsules, MEC-N showed
the lowest level of total leaching of nutrients (23.3%)
during 5 h of immersion in seawater and released
65% FAA after 60min. During laboratory trials,75%
larvae had accepted the MEC-N capsule. The results
of the study suggest that chitosan can be used as a
wall material for preparing microcapsules to deliver
drugs and nutrients to M. rosenbergii larvae.